The lesson for this year's Oscar nominations? Don't be an R-rated film!

For a list of the complete nominations, go HERE.  As always, click on the movies with links for the original theatrical review.  I write a lot about the inexplicable trend of how the various year-end awards groups only consider 'appropriate' movies to be considered awards-material.  There is and always has been a certain disdain for populist entertainment, a trend that's only gotten worse as the independent film movement exploded in the early 1990s and the year-end Oscar bait-calender got more jam-packed over the last five weeks of the year.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II may have received almost unanimously rave reviews (96% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but it doesn't count because it was a big-budget fantasy drama that is considered 'popular' entertainment.  Bridesmaids may have been one of the most successful R-rated comedies of recent years, a well-reviewed (90% on Rotten Tomatoes) comedy that may have been a game-changer in terms of how mass-market female-driven entertainments are viewed in terms of their commercial potential.  But no, it's not a character-driven dramedy that's one of the best films of the year, it's just that 'women shit in a sink' movie, so it's not worthy.  But a drama with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock that's gasp... about 9/11?!  That's EXACTLY the kind of film that is supposed to be among the year's best, right?  And so it is that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a film with a 48% positive ranking on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46% score on Metacritic is now considering by the Academy to be one of the nine best films of the year.

Oscar Speculation - Last but not least - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wants to be the Million Dollar Baby (or the John Kerry) of the 2011 Oscar race.

There was much speculation over the last couple of days over Warner Bros' decision not to make sure that Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in time for the first batch of critics' awards.  The first official screening will be December 2nd (no, I probably won't be attending that early), which means that the Tom Hanks/Sandra Bullock drama won't be eligible for consideration for the National Board of Review or the New York Film Critics Circle, both of which are so consumed with being 'the first' to announce their year-end plaudits that they aren't even waiting until the last month of the year.  The rumblings run the gamut from 'it won't be done in time' to 'it's not that good' to 'we want to capitalize on positive audience word of mouth'.  All or none of those could be true.  But I think that Warner Bros. is playing a slightly different game.